BC NDP

Like their campaign promises, B.C. Liberal throne speech commitments are meaningless rhetoric. As with their promises to not introduce the harmonized sales tax, to protect health care and education, and to not sell B.C. Rail or tear up negotiated contracts, the B.C. Liberals have routinely abandoned commitments made in their throne speeches.

In the throne speech after the 2005 election, the B.C. Liberals set out “Five Great Goals for a Golden Decade” and then broke their word on each:

B.C. Liberal Goal: “To make B.C. the best educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent.”

What They’ve Done:

• Continued to break their own class size requirements, with more than 11,000 classrooms in violation of the Liberals own size requirements.
• Cut library funding by 22 per cent and slashed post-secondary institution-based adult literacy programs.
• Cut $115.6 million from school budgets by eliminating grants and clawing back other payments
• Cut in half the gaming grants to Parent Advisory Committees.
• Piled costs onto post-secondary students to the point where B.C. students now have the second-highest debt loads in the country, and since the election made the situation even worse by slashing student aid.
• Doubled university tuition fees since 2001 and cut funding to student aid.

B.C. Liberal Goal: “To lead the way in North America in healthy living and physical fitness.”

What They’ve Done:

• Cut the grants for high school sports championships, with the education minister telling kids they should go play in parks instead.
• Cut the budget for population and public health – whose mandate includes disease prevention and the promotion of healthy living – by 44 per cent in the 2009 budget.
• Refused to provide funding to implement new requirements on physical education in our schools.
• Politicized the handling of grants for playgrounds, doling out money for playgrounds in schools that didn’t need it, leaving resource-poor schools with none.

B.C. Liberal Goal: “To build the best system of support in Canada for persons with disabilities, special needs, children at risk and seniors.”

What They’ve Done:

• Broken their 2001 promise to build 5,000 long-term care beds.
• Closed long term care beds and forcibly moved seniors to new facilities, after having told them they could stay.
• Ignored warnings about abuse and negligence at seniors’ care homes.
• Put children at risk by ignoring the Hughes Report and failing to take concrete action as B.C. has had the worst rate of child poverty in the country for five straight years.
• Ignored criticism from the independent child and youth representative, who said that more children will need protection during the recession.
• Cut funding and staff to the Ministry for Children and Families.

B.C. Liberal Goal: “To lead the world in sustainable environmental management, with the best air and water quality, and the best fisheries management, bar none.”

What They’ve Done:

• Created a gold-rush mentality on our rivers and streams with little regard for the long-term environmental concerns.
• Cut more than a quarter of the budget from the Ministry of Environment since the 2008 “Green Budget.”
• Refused to take action on species at risk.
• Opened the door to moving toward off-shore oil and gas exploration and heavy oil tanker traffic.
• Ignored the serious environmental damage caused by open-net fish farming, and now essentially washed their hands of fisheries altogether.
• Cut more than half the budget of the “Environmental Protection’ program that provides for clean, healthy and safe water and land.
• Cancelled the LiveSmart BC program, which provided incentives to make energy efficiency upgrades to homes and appliances.
• Cancelled the sales tax exemptions on energy efficient vehicles, appliances and building materials by implementing the HST.

B.C. Liberal Goal: “To create more jobs per capita than anywhere else in Canada.”

What They’ve Done:

• Sat by while B.C. led Canada in the worst rate of full-time job losses over the past 12 months.
• Took B.C.’s economy to second-worst in Canada last year.
• Played spectator as the forest industry, the major industry in much of rural B.C., spiraled into crisis, leaving more than 50 mills idled and tens of thousands of workers without jobs.